


transform with pressure

by ag_sasami



Category: Black Clover - 田畠裕基 | Tabata Yuki
Genre: Developing Friendships, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 02:03:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17050988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ag_sasami/pseuds/ag_sasami
Summary: Sometimes you need to be reminded that you aren't done yet.





	transform with pressure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [puppylove7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/puppylove7/gifts).



> Vague handwaving for timing, somewhere between episodes 11 and 14.

Noelle finds him lying on the forest floor among the craters of her magic rampage, legs splayed wide, arms tucked beneath his head like a pillow. “Bakasta.”

“Noelle!” He opens his eyes, a smile stretched across his face but it’s wrong, put on for her company. It’s a lie strained and thin across teeth and he lets it slip rather abruptly, chased by a careful blankness she’s never seen on him. It’s in his unfocused gaze, in the way his mouth is not quite closed. His cloak is draped carefully over a low hanging branch of a nearby tree leaving his shoulders unusually exposed. Noelle thinks he looks warm laying in the sun, skin bronzed from all the time spent outside, light and shadow playing over the contours of his arms. He makes her nervous; something about how she finds his rough way of speaking charming. Or maybe it’s how abrupt his honesty is, and how it guts her every time he announces his feelings without an ounce of shame or modesty or awareness of what others think. 

Alone. They’re alone—she didn’t think this through. 

“Is this a bad time?” She asks by way of filling the vacuum of sound between them, a quiet space between them that is in her own head a screeching white noise. Noelle thinks as soon as she’s asked that she might be intruding on what is apparently a private moment. With the words out though, it’s too late to turn back, to return the sounds to her tongue one syllable at a time and swallow them back down. All options of retreat vanished with one harmless question she would like to rewind and give more thought to first. 

“No! No, it’s fine.” Another lie. His eyes don’t meet hers and the smile doesn’t meet his. Asta closes them and doesn’t attempt to reassure her any further. 

Asta—always warm and open and guileless—being anything but forthcoming with whatever is on his mind sets an itch beneath her skin to know _why_. She wants to press him for information. To see him in this vulnerable state he's poorly playing off as normal is confusing, makes her stomach knot and her heart hammer awkwardly in her chest. This emotionally dishonest boy is not the Asta she knows. This Asta, pensive and unhappy, is a shadow of the loud, determined, magic-less commoner with the strength to carry the world on his shoulders. 

“I should hope not!” Heat creeping up from her throat to her cheeks, voice tight. Her hair catches in the dappled afternoon sunlight and shines sharp like silver when she tosses it over her shoulder with a well-practiced flick of her wrist. It takes a feat of determination to clear the nervous stutter caught in her throat. “After all, I took the time to grace you with my presence.”

When he presses his lips together in a tight line in response, an effort to keep his laughter buried, she wants to shake him by the shoulders. Just a little. She prefers his wide stupid grin that’s all teeth and good spirits, but has no idea how to tell him. It’s not like that’s something she could just say. 

It’s not like his smile means anything, anyway. 

Instead, she settles down beside him on the hard ground, knees tucked up toward her chest, arms folded beneath them to hold her dress against her thighs. What little grass grows in the empty patches of sunlight is cool and soft against her feet. It introduces itself to the spaces in her sandals. The silence is companionable, marked by the rustling of leaves in the light breeze, the sun beginning its crawl down to the horizon, the humid soil cooling the air around them. 

She matches her breath to his. Steady, inhale. Exhale. 

Stillness makes her anxious: a calm before some new storm that makes her palms sweat and her neck itch. To be still is to be available for too long. Vulnerability. Soft spaces left unguarded. All openings for someone to hurl an insult or drive words like knives between her ribs. Noelle moves reflexively to fill the space again. “So. What are you doing out here? I thought you’d be fooling around with Magna again.” 

Asta sits up abruptly in a complicated flailing of limbs. Affronted, he huffs, “Hey, that’s serious training!” She watches the hard lines of his back, the flex of tension across his shoulders as he settles his motion. After a moment, he chuckles easy and soft— _self-conscious_ , she thinks—before turning to look at her over his shoulder. He digs his fingertips into the ground on either side of his hips when he adds, “I was thinking, mostly.”

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Noelle mumbles in reply. Winces a bit at the sharpness of her tone and the timing of her snide comment. But to be still, silent, is to be defenseless and left waiting for another insult. Another humiliation. 

_Incompetent._

_A disgrace._

It’s not like she could argue those points. Her siblings were right. _Well_ , she thinks, _they used to be._ Her lack of control and having to be saved from her own mistakes was another sort of humiliating. Yet these people, _this_ person, refused to accept her shamed-faced and broken. They were ten sets of hands outstretched and welcoming. The Black Bulls put breath in her tired lungs, unshackled her. At least that’s what Noelle wants to believe for herself. To be with them, to really accept what they seem to be offering, is to become a fuller version of herself no longer hampered by the judgement of her family and the constant shame she feels for her inadequacies. These people want her as she is: inadequate and full of potential. 

“Well I _was_ training.” Asta’s voice pulls her from her thoughts. He twists at the waist, offers a canteen to her across his chest. “Want some?”

The odor reaches her before the flask. Shuddering. “Not a chance. That’s disgusting.” Appalled. She can feel the expression on her face, sees in her head the haughty twist of her mouth in something like a sneer. It feels out of place, the arrogance, with the way they’ve all stormed her defenses. Asta ignores it, if he notices at all.

Asta shrugged. “It’s moguro plant juice. It’s supposed to increase your magic abilities. But I guess your magic is strong enough without it anyway. Might be a bad idea to make you stronger, huh?” He makes a valid point, but it stings still. Her failure still so fresh, the choking weight of her own magic as water in her lungs, the way they took her out at the knees with their kindness. It makes her heart ache and twist unpleasantly in her chest. “Hey, do you want to practice now that you’re here?”

Whether he is cutting off an opportunity for her to ask further, or (more likely) rolling with whatever pops into his head, she flows with the moment and lets it change. “I suppose.”

As they spar, her hand feels steadier with the wand in her palm, as though the sight of a straight path before her is enough to guide her aim. Maybe it would be enough if it were any other wand, but this is black market magic. Noelle’s mana twists and bends with the wand. If she concentrates, she can feel her own power build up, recede, stabilize in a complicated arrangement between her and the wand. She uses Asta as a target. He stays stationary until she can hit him reliably, but then he’s moving. 

Less and less predictably. Faster on his feet. Higher in the trees to retreat. 

Her aim improves. Slowly, her control improves. Already she notices the difference, though the effect is small aside from her accuracy. 

They spar until the sunlight grows long and warm still just shy of dusk. By the time Asta plants his sword in the ground and takes a knee, Noelle is panting, her coattails clinging to the sweat behind her knees. She’s nearly out of mana, but she managed to hit Asta nearly every shot near the end. Asta’s movement in her periphery catches her attention. He drops in an undignified sprawl, leaning back to brace his weight on the heels of his palms, and he’s beaming at her.

This smile is _not_ a lie. 

“Noelle! Your magic is amazing!” For a moment, she wishes Asta could communicate without shouting. But she remembers the alternative in that pensive distance she found him not a few hours before and quickly embraces the volume again. Sinks into the expansive sound, an embarrassing abrasive thing.

“I _am_ royalty, you know,” she sniffs. Asta’s laughter forces her out of the act, drags a giggle out of her. She braces her sweaty palms on her knees and takes a few deep breaths, watches the ends of her hair drip water into the puddle in front of her. If she could muster the courage to aim for that bullseye again and again from under the weight of all her previous humiliation, she thinks she can find the courage to just ask what she wants to know. Though, she is slightly disappointed with how timid it sounds when she asks, “What were you out here thinking about?”

Asta’s smile fades into something wistful, and he’s quiet long enough Noelle thinks he may not answer her at all. He hunches over on himself, just a bit, to pull at the grass between his thighs. “You don’t ever miss home, do you?” is not the response she expected. 

“I- I don’t. Usually.” Asta nods in acknowledgement, intones an affirmative noise but doesn’t comment further for a while.

“I was thinking about Hage and Sister Lily and the promises I made to her and the kids at the church. Watching you and everyone else...your magic is so strong and I was thinking about just how much more I need to do if I ever want to become the Wizard King.” Noelle doesn’t really understand what is it about Asta looking so close to despondent that upsets her so, makes her feel she needs to respond. She thinks again about the way he humbled her, smashed her defense like they were cheap glass. To be brought down to the same level of her own disdain and yet to be told she’s a challenge feels too big to ignore and too big to form a useful response.

“Asta,” she murmurs, unsure what else to say now that she’s started. 

He looks at her then, eyes fixed on hers and says plainly, “I have to be stronger than you. Stronger than Captain Yami. Stronger than the _Wizard King_ , and I have no magic to do it and I don’t have a plan. But I _have_ to.” 

She’s spurred to action by the even determination in his tone. It’s like the embodiment of how the Black Bulls have begun building her back up from her lowest point (face first in the mud entirely by her own failure). Asta started it. Asta shines with passion and ambition and compassion. The wrongness of a pensive Asta caught in his own head in lieu of taking action drives _her_ to do something. The certainty of action lets the words choked in her throat escape, turns down the white noise in her mind. She pushes past all her awkward and unexpected nerves and makes the choice faster than she thinks about it.

“Right,” she declares. Decisive. Without providing context. If Asta’s confidence is low, if his self-doubt is simmering beneath the surface, then she’s going to be the strong one in this moment. She brushes her hands clean of the grime that accumulated while they sparred. Standing in front of Asta, hands on her hips she continues, “We’re not done yet.”

Ultimately, it's as much for her as it is for him in that moment.

“Huh?” 

She needs to remind _herself_ , and Noelle needs _him_ to find his center of gravity. They are a team now and she wants to embrace that, needs it to be whole and hale and recognizable so she can learn how they all fit together. “Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not saying we’re on the same level. B-but. Controlling my magic-” she stops, chews on the inside of her lip a moment and reconsiders her start. “If it’s possible for me to get control over my magic, I think it’s probably possible for you to be the Wizard King.” 

His wide-eyed stare is worth every jittery, anxious nerve sparkling in her forearms. Noelle offers Asta her hand to pull him up from the wet ground. “Like I said.” She hopes she looks braver than she feels when she punches her free fist into the air and yells in an Asta-pitched voice, “We’re not done yet!”

His grin is blinding. Asta offers a fist outstretched toward her, and Noelle has no idea what he’s trying to do. When she makes no move to respond, he instructs her to, “Make a fist and hold it out like I am.” She raises an eyebrow at him, incredulous, but does what he asked. Her nails dig into her palms uncomfortably, more so when he knocks their fists together with a soft, “We’re not done yet. Right?”

Noelle shakes her head. “Not yet.” Smiles at him. She feels reckless. She feels like her head isn’t attached to her shoulders. She bumps her fist against Asta’s in a demonstration of solidarity once more, throws her head back and squeezes her eyes closed. Shouts “Not yet!” at the sky, a promise made, her voice and Asta’s in unison.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide puppylove7! This story tried to be several other things first, so I hope the thing it finally settled into lives up to expectations.


End file.
